10.27.2006

A Request: "Halloween Safety" (Centron/ Coronet Films, 1977)

So far my film career has been pretty limited; in 1977 I was in an educational short called "Halloween Safety" made by Centron/ Coronet films (here's a still, though this isn't me): and then 23 years later I was in a feature length porn film called "A Return to Boobsville" (more on this someday, but for now you can just click here if you wanna see a screen grab. It probably falls somewhere between kinda safe & kinda not safe for work, but don't worry; I kept my clothes on the whole time).

Now while these two appearances share a few similarities (I'd suggest that both try to inform and entertain the viewer for example), the main difference as I see it is that I can easily watch "A Return to Boobsville" all day and night on a variety of formats, but "Halloween Safety" vanished from me the day it was made and remains lost in my own mental limbo. I thought I'd catch a break when I was still living in Kansas and Centron threw out tons of their old film around 1992, but a friend of mine salvaged much of it from the dumpster behind their offices and nothing turned up. When "Carnival of Souls" came out in a hotshit double-disc Criterion Collection edition I hoped that, among the other Centron educationals, "Halloween Safety" might appear (there's a spooky thematic bridge there, right?), but no dice. Hey I even asked Something Weird Video to poke around when I was designing box covers for them, but they didn't find a thing.

These days I can barely remember anything about the experience, but here's what remains: in 1976 I was asked to be in the film by a scout who visited my grade school and picked me out of my 2nd grade class's outfit parade. My costume was a homemade Creature From The Black Lagoon getup with a thin rubber mask ordered out of a comic book for the head, and my previous year's Sears-bought "Planet of the Apes" suit turned inside out, dyed green and accented with darker green hanging cheesecloth (which was supposed to resemble seaweed) for the body. I'm pretty sure my screen time is totally minimal and all I really recall is that I told a "Halloween joke" in a party scene, I was scolded for being too rambunctious at one point, and I marched around a bit with the other kids -- that's pretty much it.

So by now I'm sure it's rather obvious that I, you know, need to see this again, right? Well I'm hoping that through the magic of the internet, I can finally close in. From what I can sleuth out through Google it seems that a number of schools claim the title in their collections, and for a while a company called "Magic Lantern" even stuck up a short clip (that's where the picture for this post came from) culled from the 1985 "Second Edition". To be honest I don't really know if the '85 release is a re-editing of the '77 version or if it's 100% unique, but seeing that clip was the closest I've gotten to this thing in years. My question now is: can anyone out there help? Perhaps some obsessive educational film collector or someone with access to a school film library? Anyone? C'mon now! Just hit me up!

Heh. Man, I sure hope that after all these years it turns out I'm actually IN this thing.

17 Comments:

Yeah, though "in" is kind of overstating my role. Basically I delivered a few lines to a naked girl or two & that was it (they filmed it at my old job). There was about 5 hours of doing nothing & like 7 minutes of naked girl talking, but I guess that isn't bad if you compare it to a lousy date or something.

I emailed Skip over at avgeeks.com to see if he knows the film. He's got the biggest darn collection of classroom and educational films that I've seen. It isn't listed on his website, but maybe he knows where the film may lurk.

Jason, I posted your request in our members only area. Theres alot of creative folks that collect all sorts of things beyond what our main group is about. Plus some with school/film connections. Hopefully one of them will be able to help in some way.www.fraternalorderofmoai.org

Thanks everyone -- amazingly it seems like Resident Clinton has already come through via a friend if his! I honestly can't express how amazing this is to me -- just too great. In fact this very Halloween will be exactly 30 years after I was picked to in that thing; what an insane world.

Yeah, if it's at all possible I'll throw it on up for sure. To be honest, I'll be happy to post it even if it's the 1985 version or if my part was totally edited out -- for me those old Centron educational films are great if only because they were almost all filmed in my hometown & half the time they star people I used to see shopping at Kroger's or something. So great.

I work in a library and am always trying to find interesting educational films from the 50s - through 80s.

After finding you blog a few months ago, I've been searching through other catalogs trying to find the Halloween Safety film, but I haven't had any luck. My interlibrary loan person tried to request from the libraries that supposedly own it, but had no luck.

This is not too uncommon, a lot of libraries don't update their records to reflect films or videos that they got rid of over time.

I did get the 80s version, but I didn't notice any clips that might have come from the first version. If you want a copy on DVD - post a reply.

Anonymous: yeah for sure I would love to see the 80's one too -- that would be very very cool! Hit me up at my email address (it's on the main page or via myspace) & I can get you whatever info you'd need from me ($ for media/ postage/ time/ etc for example).

Thanks a lot! The funny thing is that those are actually rips of my copies of the films -- a year or so after this post I managed to track them both down (it's sorta detailed in a different post on here I think). Then I paid to have them transferred over from film to digital (at a cost of *cough, cough* $500 or something -- I forget now but it was nuts), and have shared 'em w/ the world on YouTube, Vimeo, Archive & a few other places.

So while these little gems were once pretty rare, I'm happy to say that they're now all over the world -- totally worth the effort!

But still I wanted to thank you for your note -- it's just one more cool example of how awesome the folks I've come into contact with via this blog have been over the years. No foolin'.